Roadschooling my way: The Miller family of EdventureProject.com

The Miller family in the Sahara desert

This article is one in a series of interviews with families who have chosen to forego a life in one house in one place in favor of one on the road traveling in a variety of manners. Jennifer & Tony Miller set out with their four children in March, 2008 to show their children the world.  After spending a year traveling on bicycles, they traded their wheels for backpacks and continued on.

Click here to see a slide show of the Miller's travels so far.

And read Jennifer's thoughts about touring on bicycles with children.

Roadschooling Examiner:  Tell me a bit of your story – how many and how old are your kids, where, how, and why are you traveling – stuff like that.

Jennifer:  We are the Miller family - Tony, Jenn, Hannah (13), Gabe (11), Elisha (9), and Ezra (7).  We've traveled with our kids since they were babies:  Canada, Mexico, Hawaii, and the lower 48.  But in March of 2008 we took the big plunge, sold our house and most of our stuff, and hit the road full time. 

The first year we spent cycling through Europe and North Africa.  We're now living in a camper in New England while Tony works for a little while.  This winter we're taking our backpacks and heading somewhere warm... not sure where - you can submit a vote, if you like!!  One of our long standing goals for our kids has been to set their feet on each of the continents before we emancipate them to their own paths.  We're only about half way there! 

As for the "why",  there are lots of reasons.  Among them, we want to raise kids who have a broader vision of the world than what a white-middle-class American upbringing could provide.  The best way to do that, in our opinion, is to let them drown in the rest of the world for a while. 

Tony and I don't want to waste the best years of OUR lives working for "stuff" when in the end the stuff doesn't matter.  All we get to take out of this world are our memories and our relationships.  We have a few short years with these four fabulous humans who'll live on into a future we'll never see.  To do anything but spend every waking moment sowing into who they are becoming with the best experiences we can find seems like a waste.  So, we gave it "all" up, packed it in, and hit the road.  It's been the best thing we've ever done.

Roadschooling Examiner:  What does your “school day” look like?  Do your children sit around the table and work on their lessons or are more of an unschooler and allow education to come from the journey?

Jennifer:  When we home schooled before hitting the road we schooled four days a week about four hours per day using a blend of the Classical and Charlotte Mason philosophies of education.  By the time we left, our kids were all between one and three grade levels ahead of their public schooled peers, so we didn't have too much concern over them losing ground while we were traveling. 

The year we were cycling we did not take school books with us.  However, the kids were journaling and they each had a project that ran the course of the trip.  Hannah collected "Dead People" (historical figures). Gabe worked on a photography project.  Elisha collected postcards from places we visited and Ezra collected candy wrappers from each country we passed through.  When we had a roof over our heads - for a while in Prague, Tunisia and France - we would school intensively on our four day per week schedule again.  In this way we kept the little boys from forgetting their math facts and made some forward progress in specific subjects we were concerned about. 

What we discovered, at the end of the year, was that nobody had lost any ground at all, they jumped right back into their books exactly where they'd left off over a year before with no difficulties whatsoever.  Now, living in a camper, we have an organized school day four days per week, like we used to, but we are a little more flexible than we used to be.  We school intensively when we are in one place to allow for the times that we are on the road to be more free form.

With one working at the 10th grade level and one at the 2nd grade level and two in between, it's always a challenge to make sure that we're covering the ground we need to be.  What is great about roadschooling is that there is so much they are learning all the time from the changing scenery that by simply getting through the "basics" of "school" they end up far and away ahead of the game.  “School" isn't just the math and writing lesson for the morning; it's shopping in the Arab souq, learning to make Italian cheeses, playing Petanque in Dutch, and figuring the distance across the Mediterranean in hours as well as miles, not to mention the currency conversion they've learned from losing teeth on all continents and sorting out how much the tooth fairy brought in American dollars!

Roadschooling Examiner:  Many parents have a hard time dealing with the idea of living a nomadic life. How did you come to the decision to live a life on the road and roadschool your children? 

Jennifer:  For us it wasn't a tough decision.  We were already homeschooling our kids and I'd spent a lot of time traveling as a child so I wasn't worried about how that would be for the kids.  Before our kids were born we talked extensively about what we wanted for our family, who we wanted to be as a unit, and what kind of people we hoped our kids would be.  We knew even then that major traveling would have to be a part of life in order to meet those goals.  It was just a matter of getting everyone out of diapers before we hit the road! 

The thing about the "expected" course that parents have a hard time breaking out of is that NOTHING about family life is "expected" - no matter how you live.  All of the things that families live and struggle with in a house they also struggle with in a tent or a hostel or a hotel.  Location is not the issue in family life - it's the relationships.  It is really a matter of what is important to you in life.  If stuff and other people's opinions matter most, then hitting the road is going to seem impossible.  If experiences, memories and living fully in each moment are what matter most, then it's as easy as going to Walmart.  You open the door and walk out.  The only difference is that it's longer before you come back.

Roadschooling Examiner:   What has been your greatest challenge in the area of the education of your children?

Jennifer:  I was a teacher before having children, so I didn't have a lot of the fears about homeschooling that some mothers do.  Children are born to learn and if encouraged they do so, beautifully.  For me the biggest challenge came when Hannah began her high school work - figuring out how to do that from the road and balance the course work that becomes more intensive at that stage of the game with the flexibility of our lifestyle.  The great benefit has been that our travels add so much to her high school experience and have allowed her to broaden her horizons in ways she never could have in the local high school classroom.

Roadschooling Examiner:   What about some of those lightbulb moments when you realized you were doing right by taking your children on the road?  Can you tell us about some of them?

Jennifer:  Every time I see the kids join in with playground games with kids they've never met and who speak a different language I have that lightbulb moment.  (And homeschooled kids are supposed to lack socially!?)  I love that my kids have learned how to drift in and out of countries, languages, and people groups comfortably.  When they feel free enough to walk up to any adult and ask questions about what they're doing or who they are, it's then that I am reminded of how glad I am that we're doing this.  

The main thing we want our kids to grasp, they are grasping:  That people everywhere are the same: living, working, loving, raising families, trying to make ends meet.  We're all one big human family that needs to listen to one another, learn from one another, and be compassionate to one another.  

When Israel started bombing Gaza last winter we were in North Africa and the press we were getting on the tragedy was from Al Jazeera instead of CNN.  We saw a whole different side to the conflict than folks in North America did.  When we returned home, the kids were asking lots of questions about how come the Palestinians were "the bad guys" when they were the ones being bombed.  Of course there are two sides to that issue and there is no easy answer, but I had another lightbulb moment there because I realized that we'd given our kids the gift of living with Arab people for three months and they'd learned to see their side of the story.  It seems like this is one of the best ways to "propaganda-proof" our children.

Roadschooling Examiner:  One of the concerns of roadschooling is that of stability and long-term friendships.  Have you found that to be a problem?  Do kids need to have one place to call ‘home’?

Jennifer:   It is so wonderful to live in the age of the internet!  Our kids can swap e-mails with their friends, do video chats from the Sahara, and sing Happy Birthday to their cousins from the other side of the world.  Our kids were VERY worried about leaving their best friends and they talk about them every single day.  

Perhaps the sweetest day of the whole year was the laughter and tear-filled reunion at the airport when we flew back.  Those friendships didn't fade one bit and those other kids gained so much from learning about all of the places we were going and what we were seeing... their wise Mama worked it into their home schooling.  

What my kids have commented on over the years is that the friend part is the best and the worst of it.  When you live on the road you are always meeting new people and we've formed several precious, life long friendships in far flung places.  But no matter where we go, we're always saying goodbye to someone and there are always people to miss.  Again, I think this is a benefit in the long run, even though it can be hard emotionally.  The kids learn that "home" is not a place - it's people - and we find "home" in so many unexpected places and dear friends found where you least expect them.

Roadschooling Examiner:  There are many parents out there who are thinking about doing exactly what you and I are doing – living a nomadic life with our children.  What advice can you give them based on your experiences?

Jennifer:   Just DO it!!  The hardest part is deciding to go.  Once you're committed to that, everything else will fall into place.  We spent two long years saving and planning.  Check lists every month for two years of what needed to happen to make the dream a reality.  It was a lot of work.  It's one thing to drop a life and hit the road when you're twenty something and have only yourself to worry about; it's another thing with four kids, health, educational, and financial concerns. The mountain of details can seem insurmountable, but it's not.  

We've met a lot of old people who are happy to tell us what they regret and what they would do differently in hopes of saving we young people the pain of errors.  We've never met ONE person who's said, "I wish I hadn't taken that risk and invested in my kids."  Every old person we encounter tells us the same thing - "You'll never regret it!"  And we think they're right.  If you have the soul of an adventurer and a dream, DO IT... don't waste your one trip around the sun on less than your dream.

Roadschooling Examiner:  Thanks Jennifer!  I love that - don't waste your one trip around the sun on less than your dream.  Something for us all to consider.

Follow along with the Millers on their website, EdventureProject.com

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You may be interested in these other articles about traveling with children:

Roadschoolling: Is it legal?

Roadschooling: Which method fits you?

Roadschooling: Integrated studies naturally

Roadschooling my way: An interview with the Burchett family

Family travel: A life changing event

Extended family travel in tough economic times

How to afford an extended family vacation

 And interviews with these families who have chosen a life on two wheels bicycling the world:

The Williams family is on a open-ended tour on a triple bike with their 9-year-old son.

Rebekka and Florian traveled the Pan American Highway to Tierra del Fuego with their small son in a trailer.

The Verhage family with sons aged 11 & 13 have cycled south from LA.  They are now in Peru.

My family is currently cycling the Pan American Highway - we've cycled 16,000 km from Alaska to Colombia so far. You can find us at Family on Bikes.

Contact me via email at familyonbikes@gmail.com

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